“Scaffolding Skills” by Screwtape
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Epistemic status: Exploratory

A scaffold is a lightweight, temporary construction whose point is to make working on other buildings easier. Maybe you could live and work on a scaffold, but why would you? The point is the building. When the building is done, you can take down the scaffold, though you might put it back up if you need to do repairs. If your scaffold was shaky and unsteady, or fell over when you were halfway up, this would make it harder to work on the building. This essay is what we call a constructive argument Here's the thesis of this essay: sometimes I think skills are also scaffolds; more useful for what else they let you learn than for the skill itself. One reason a skill might be weirdly hard to learn is you lack scaffolding skills and don't realize this. It's like trying to fix a third story [...]

Outline:

(01:05) Ia.

(02:45) Ib.

(04:14) Ic.

(05:04) 2.

(06:24) 3.

First published: April 18th, 2025

Source: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/68iix7PFHPADhdQYF/scaffolding-skills)

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Narrated by TYPE III AUDIO).

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